Carried Away By The Spirit

The LORD took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filled with bones. He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out. Then he asked me, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?” “O Sovereign LORD,” I replied, “you alone know the answer to that.” [Ezekiel 37.1-3]

Oh that Yahweh would take hold of us and carry us away by His Spirit! What might we see?

In the case of Ezekiel, he saw dead, dry bones. These bones represented what should have been irreversible death. These bones spoke of permanent lifelessness. The only life to be considered when looking at these bones was life of the past - and the distant past at that.

What it means to be "carried away by the Spirit of the LORD" is not really clear by the scripture above, but I believe whatever it means will be best understood in prayer. It would seem Ezekiel started this whole experience in prayer. And, from there, the story unfolds.

The thing is, what the Father revealed to Ezekiel was an impossible situation in human estimation - dry, dead bones do not live again. However, this fact was proven to be merely human opinion. Interestingly enough, the one "carried away by the Spirit," Ezekiel, did not declare the obvious human estimation of "death" that he was looking at in the dry bones, but instead, replied to the Father that He alone knew whether the bones could live again. Ezekiel's reply to God's question is very important to this story and to our story as well.

We must be willing to forget conventional human knowledge when God is speaking to us. We must acknowledge that He alone is God and, regardless of all the science in the world, can and will do things contrary to human convention. He always has and always will do this.

When we encounter Yahweh (the LORD) in prayer, we'd best simply admit our ignorance (or even what we consider knowledge) and acknowledge instead that He knows everything. And then, we should be ready for our human thinking to be challenged.

Father, let our prayer lives be transformed to the point that we are carried away by Your Spirit. And then, help us to put aside human knowledge and acknowledge Your higher knowledge and power.